iPhone 5S vs. Galaxy S4: Which phone should you buy?

iPhone 5S vs. Galaxy S4: Which phone should you buy?

After all the leaks, the iPhone 5S announcement was short on surprises. There were even the requisite subtle jabs at Android. Like it or not, the smartphone market has changed a lot in recent years. Android devices outsell Apple, and the company most responsible for driving Android sales forward is Samsung. This South Korean manufacturer is probably the only phone maker other than Apple that inspires an almost-cult-like following. The Galaxy S4 was released to almost universal acclaim earlier this year, and remains the top-selling flagship Android device. Did Apple successfully parry Samsung’s attack, or has Android pulled out ahead of the iPhone?

iPhone 5S vs. Galaxy S4: Dimensions, weight, and build quality

The iPhone 5S has hardly changed at all on the outside when compared to the iPhone 5. It is still an extremely thin and light phone at just 7.6mm thick and 112 grams. The 4-inch screen keeps the device small and easy to handle. It’s also a very premium-feeling device. Apple loves to talk about the precise way the components are fitted together and those striking chamfers, but it’s not just talk. The iPhone 5S is actually a lovely piece of technology.

The Galaxy S4 is definitely a high-end phone, but it doesn’t really feel like one. The GS4 is made of a slippery plastic housing that only gets slipperier the more you handle it. It has a much larger surface area with the 5-inch AMOLED screen. It’s not much thicker than the iPhone 5S, though — just 7.9mm. However, it weighs 130 grams. That’s light for a big phone, but still more hefty than the iPhone. Imagine how heavy it would be if it wasn’t made from plastic.

The iPhone 5S comes in gold, white, and space gray. Yes, just straight black seems to be missing. The Galaxy S4 is out in white and black on most carriers, but purple, blue, red, brown, and pink versions are on the way this year. Apple’s more understated approach to color choices seems more compelling.

iPhone 5S vs. Galaxy S4: Hardware specs

The iPhone 5S is packing a new Apple A7 system-on-a-chip (SoC). The company is famously tight-lipped about the details of its ARM chips, but the company claimed in its keynote that the A7 was “up to twice as fast” as the A6 (which is in the iPhone 5). That would be a serious performance gain, but leaked benchmarks point to a more modest (but still impressive) 31% performance boost.

It appears that the A7 is another dual-core chip, but it it utilizes the ARMv8 64-bit instruction set. This makes it the first 64-bit ARM chip in a mobile device. The Swift processing cores in the A7 are reportedly capable of running at 1.7GHz, but Apple may down-clock them to save power.

Apple is also using a new coprocessor called the M7. This is a little slice of silicon that lives apart from the main SoC. Its job is to process accelerometer and gyroscope input while the phone is asleep or doing other things. It will allow apps to track your movements without draining the battery. One example cited is fitness apps, but that’s just the start.

Samsung’s baby runs on a more conventional Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core SoC (in the US). It’s clocked at 2.3GHz and it really screams. It doesn’t have any of the nifty coprocessor magic phones like the Moto X and iPhone 5S are using, but the GS4 does have a big 2600 mAh battery to make up for it.

The GS4 is still 32-bit like all other smartphones, but this is more of an abstract distinction. It will be relevant for hardware and app support in the future, but not right now.

Apple has stuck with the 4-inch 1136×640 Retina display from the last generation. This is a very nice panel with almost perfect viewing angles. The Galaxy S4 has a 5-inch Super AMOLED that holds its own and then some — the colors are more vibrant and it’s 1080p. When you look at the pixel density, the iPhone loses out with 325 pixels-per-inch (PPI), while the GS4 is up at 440 PPI.

One of the few new bits of hardware Apple added in the iPhone 5S is the fingerprint reader under the home button. The Galaxy S4 doesn’t have an equivalent feature. Anyone with an iPhone 5S will be able to unlock the phone automatically just by touching it, and that could be an excellent improvement to the overall user experience.

Samsung makes the best overall cameras on an Android device, and the Galaxy S4 set a new standard. This 13MP sensor captures incredible detail, and it even performs well in low light situations. Samsung has reached an almost Apple-level of focus accuracy too. The iPhone 5S sticks with its 8MP camera, but takes a page from a different Android OEM’s playbook.

The iPhone 5S has larger pixels instead of cramming more small pixels onto a larger sensor. The 1.5µm pixels are larger than previous phones, which allows the iPhone to take in more light. That means better low-light images, and faster exposures in good light so you can capture movement better. It also has an f/2.2 aperture to assist with gathering all that light. It’s the same thing HTC is doing with its Ultrapixel sensor, which has 2.0µm pixels, but is only 4MP.